Prisma Finally Comes To Android

Prisma has finally come to the Google Play Store. It is no. 17 on the Apple App store charts after peaking at no. 10 and it has proved to be a bona fide success. And it’s no.3 on the Photo and Video App charts. The reason is the technology behind the app and its unique output when compared to other filter apps such as Instagram. The app was released on the Apple App Store on 11th June. It was created by Russian app developer Alexey Moiseenkov and his Moscow based company, Prisma Labs Inc. The app became the most downloaded app in Russia and other neighbouring countries.

Prisma is a very different app than your regular Retrica or Instagram. It doesn’t use the computing power of your phone or tablet to modify photos. It uses the whole force of its own remote, cloud based servers to do it. The AI based servers identify and break down the photographs being uploaded in to objects and identify them. Then the servers implement the chosen effect, changing each object depending upon what it is and how it will look once changed. Now this may have its disadvantages at times. Such as now, when the Android version of the app has just been released. Servers will likely be overloaded and will take some time to process your requests. That aside, the final effect is a very pretty, 50s-60s film poster-like result that leaves you nostalgic and happy. But that’s just my favourite effect. Users can choose from 30 filters that employ the painting styles of such greats as Picasso and Munk.

Prisma has racked up over 10.6 million downloads on iOS since its release and has seen 400 million photographs be uploaded. It has 1.55 million daily active users, much less than Pokemon Go but still very impressive and its daily downloads peaked at around 700,000 a day.

The app has promised and demoed video support which will be functional in the next week or so. And live video support is also coming in the near future.

Talk of Acquisition

Prisma is one of those apps you just have to have. It’s hard to believe that an app like this wasn’t already available on your phone as a default. It’s just perfect. And that attracts the big corporations.

Facebook has been notorious in its acquisition of big companies. It bought Instagram and WhatsApp, two incredibly lucrative purchases and it’s paid off pretty well. Both platforms are incredibly popular social networks with half a billion and a billion users respectively.

Add to that the fact that Facebook is looking to carve out a niche in video these days and you have a winner. Prisma can give Facebook the differentiating factor it needs to stand against YouTube. It would also be of help to the myriad celebrities and news organizations that Facebook have signed contracts about Facebook live. Now they would truly have something that would make their experience of Facebook different from that of YouTube. It would be a much less creative environment than YouTube but one much more capable than Snapchat.